Martin Keown believes Alexis Sanchez won't score as many goals as Diego Costa this season - and also feels he can improve his game by learning from Lionel Messi.

Costa has made a sensational start to life in the Premier League, scoring seven goals in his opening four games.

And Keown feels Sanchez, who has scored two, won't be as clinical - understandable as he is not primarily a centre-forward - though he does feel he can improve in the final third by learning from his former team-mate at Barcelona, Messi.

Indeed, during a Tackle Keown session for the Daily Mail, Keown was asked whether Sanchez would score as many goals as Chelsea striker Costa.

He replied: "Sanchez will chip in with his fair share but not in the same way as Costa. At the moment it’s more about the relationship between Sanchez and the players around him. He gets smothered by defences sometimes.

"Sanchez takes a lot of touches of the ball and the team copy his enthusiasm. But I think I’d like him to slow it down just a little.

"Lionel Messi’s first touch is often just a quick one to another player to draw defenders in – maybe that’s something Sanchez could work on."

Team

Pos

Goals

Dribbles Won

Touches

Apps

Mins

Aaron Ramsey

Arsenal

MF

2

1

454

4

360

Alexis Sánchez

Arsenal

FW

2

10

297

4

315

Olivier Giroud

Arsenal

FW

1

0

42

2

73

Laurent Koscielny

Arsenal

DF

1

1

153

3

206

Jack Wilshere

Arsenal

MF

1

11

212

3

233

As Opta stats show, Sanchez has scored twice for Arsenal so far this Premier League season, also winning 10 dribbles.

Keown's comments about the amount of touches the Chilean takes, meanwhile, are interesting because only Aaron Ramsey and Mathieu Debuchy have taken more than Sanchez, who moved to the Emirates Stadium from Barcelona for £35 million this summer.

The Gunners travel to Aston Villa on Saturday for their next league clash, on the back of a 2-0 humbling at Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League.

Tim Poole

Tim Poole is a sports journalist for HITC with a love of football, tennis and snooker in particular.His career to date has seen him speak to former Manchester United boss David Moyes, interview snooker world champion Mark Selby and be snubbed by Premier League managers and players in more than one language!He is a massive Roger Federer fan and lives by the motto that 'sport is life.' When he's not writing about it, he's playing it, be it football, tennis, basketball, badminton, table tennis, darts, snooker, golf or even water polo. He is better at some than others...